


Better Than Being Nothing at All

by scatter



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Angst, Community: badbadbathhouse, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-17
Updated: 2011-04-17
Packaged: 2017-10-18 05:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scatter/pseuds/scatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mitsuo's tired of being ignored.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better Than Being Nothing at All

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt at the Persona 4 Kink Meme: _I'd like to see a Mitsuo-centric fill, because I honestly feel sorry for this guy._

When Mitsuo was younger, he was cute. His mother had the pictures to prove it. His mother assured him that he grew up into a handsome young man.

His mother was lying for someone's sake, but Mitsuo wasn't sure if it were his or hers.

Being cute as a baby wasn't anything special since most everyone could claim the same thing. The real importance came afterwards, when you got older. Some people grew up to be _handsome young men_ like the gray-haired boy Mitsuo sometimes saw around the Shopping District. People like him got smiles for no reason, and discounts from female clerks, and instant admiration from his classmates. Stuff probably fell into his lap without him even trying.

Some people grew up to look like Mitsuo.

He was seven when he figured out he'd drawn the short-end of the stick. That was the first time a girl looked at him and actually recoiled. She had cute red ribbons in her hair, Mitsuo would never forget that. He complimented her because she was pretty and he wanted to be her friend. She called him gross.

Big eyes were cute on babies. When he got older they just made him look like a fish. He'd got the nickname in elementary school and it'd stuck ever since. It wasn't even creative, but what could he expect from a town full of idiots and losers?

His mom never called him fish-eyes. She pet his hair and called him _Tsu-chan_ , a dumb nickname she'd come up with years ago and never dropped. It made him angry because he wasn't Tsu-chan anymore, wasn't that dumb little kid who thought saying something nice to a girl would get him attention. He was Mitsuo, he was a straight-A student, he was better than all these stupid, stupid classmates he was forced to put up with, and he deserved better than sideways looks and baby names.

It made him angry because he hated it when she stopped and he was old enough that he shouldn't have cared.

Lots of things made him angry lately.

The murders took attention away from his school's competitions, away from him. Who cared that he'd topped the exam list again when the killer still hadn't been caught? Not his teachers, who were so used to it the accomplishment got nothing more than a courtesy congratulations. Not his classmates, who hated him for being better than them (at everything; in the time it took for them to beat the newest game, he'd done it twice and with more skill). Only his mother, who beamed at him and brushed his hair back, who planted a kiss on his forehead, and whose blind, vapid happiness was somehow worse of all.

"I'm so proud of you," she'd say, and mean every word.

He wouldn't say anything back.

"You must be so happy," she'd say, and believe it.

That would get a reaction. He'd jerk back and yell at her because she didn't understand anything. He _wasn't_ happy. He hated this town, he hated his school, and he hated that she didn't see any of that. She was his mother; she was supposed to know without him having to tell her.

He'd retreat to his room and an hour later he'd hear her timid, careful steps outside his door. He'd open it after a few minutes to find a plate of his favorite cookies and a note:

_I'm sorry, Tsu-chan, I'll try harder._

He hated that part of their fights most of all because she shouldn't have to, but he couldn't stop himself from exploding at her.

Sometimes, he saw that gray-haired boy – that handsome young man – at Junes. He wouldn't be alone. He never seemed to be alone when Mitsuo saw him; he attracted people like a magnet. He'd sit with his group of friends at the same table and they'd have a good time. Sometimes at night, Mitsuo wouldn't be able to sleep because he was so busy seeing them behind his eyes, laughing and joking and hanging out.

He wanted them out of his head. He wanted them to see him one day and call him over, to acknowledge him, but no – Yukiko was part of the group. They thought they were too good for him.

They were too dumb to figure out it was the other way around.

He cried a lot after he killed that stupid teacher. Not for long but hard enough that snot ran down his chin. He'd hidden his face in his arms because as bad as he looked normally he knew he looked ten times worse bawling like a baby and he couldn't stand the thought of having his face exposed.

He'd been scared then, right after. The rush had evaporated, the anger, the joy, all of it gone. He'd been scared because he didn't want his mother to have to think of her Tsu-chan as a murderer, because this would land him in jail and he'd seen enough documentaries to know how awful it was going to be to.

He'd been scared because Morooka's buck-toothed face looked scared too, had looked that way the whole time the bat came down, and when Mitsuo stared at it he saw himself looking back at him, ugly, and hated, and unlikely to be missed.

That part terrified him.

But the snot dried up. The tears stopped coming, and the rush came back. He was going to be famous; he was going to be the serial killer of Inaba, who'd killed three people and gotten away with it for months. The media would eat his story up, make a movie out of it. His classmates would beat themselves up for not having seen the signs.

That handsome young man and his friends would spend their days at Junes talking about him.

Everyone was going to acknowledge him, and Mitsuo would rather be acknowledged as a murderer than ugly and forgotten like Morooka.


End file.
